{"id":350988,"date":"2026-09-19T07:58:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T07:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/350988\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T07:58:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T07:58:45","slug":"dovie-eisners-life-offered-a-strong-rebuttal-to-assisted-suicide-enthusiasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/350988\/","title":{"rendered":"Dovie Eisner’s life offered a strong rebuttal to assisted-suicide enthusiasts"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 17, 2025, Nicholas Tomaino, now an editor at The Washington Post, photographed his friend Dovie Eisner holding a copy of the New York Post with his byline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was a proud moment for Eisner, a profoundly disabled New Yorker who\u2019d penned a heartfelt piece in opposition to a proposed state assisted-suicide bill, which has since become law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eisner wrote, \u201cI was born with a recessive genetic neuromuscular condition called nemaline myopathy. I use a portable ventilator to breathe and a motorized wheelchair to get around . . . I\u2019m not terminal \u2014 but many times, my own body can feel like a straitjacket. God willing, I\u2019ve got another couple of decades left.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, due to a malfunction with his ventilator, Eisner was rendered unconscious and left in a vegetative state. Last week, he passed away at just 35 years old.<\/p>\n

Last month, New York\u2019s Medical Aid in Dying law \u2014 the law he warned against \u2014 took effect.<\/p>\n

Despite his quiet, unassuming life in Brooklyn in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family, Eisner somehow befriended some of the most influential minds in the conservative political world through his intellect, perseverance and sheer will.<\/p>\n

Since his death, prominent intellectuals like Princeton University Prof. Robert George and The Washington Post\u2019s Ramesh Ponnuru have offered reflections, alongside obituaries in<\/a> UnHerd, Fox News and National Review.<\/p>\n

For a man whose physical world could be severely constrained, Eisner built a remarkably expansive intellectual and social one.<\/p>\n

His life was a living rebuttal of those pushing assisted-suicide laws.<\/p>\n

It was testimony to the fact that disabled lives have value, and that lives filled with pain and limitation can still be very much worth living.<\/p>\n

That message becomes more profound as the boundaries around assisted death continue to expand elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The same week Eisner passed away<\/a>, reports emerged that the first toddler in the Netherlands had been euthanized since the country expanded its euthanasia rules to allow children ages 1 to 12 to be eligible under certain circumstances.<\/p>\n

Last year in Spain, Noelia Castillo, a 25-year-old woman, won the \u201cright\u201d to die after a long court battle with her parents.<\/p>\n

Castillo had made multiple suicide attempts, having struggled with psychiatric illness and reported that she\u2019d been sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n

Society should\u2019ve provided her with protection, psychiatric treatment and support. Instead, the story became about her fight for permission to die.<\/p>\n

In Canada, the story\u2019s even more staggering. As Rupa Subramanya reported last year, \u201cOne out of every 20 deaths in Canada is triggered by the government-run assisted suicide program.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Ontario alone, 219 people in 2023 received medical assistance in dying by the end of the day after they requested it, with about 30% of those deaths occurring the very same day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Research indicates that suicide attempts are usually regretted by people who survive them, an important detail given how rushed many are.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In light of his suffering and dependence, Eisner lived on the wrong side of the line assisted-suicide backers draw when it comes to whose lives have value.<\/p>\n

He couldn\u2019t breathe without mechanical help; he couldn\u2019t get around without a motorized wheelchair. <\/p>\n

His body, as he put it himself, could feel like a \u201cstraitjacket.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet he wanted more time.<\/p>\n

That is what makes his testimony so powerful: Eisner chose life enthusiastically every time he left his house.<\/p>\n

The night before his coma, he recorded a video explaining how someone unfamiliar with his ventilator could reattach and repair it in an emergency. His friends would soon realize just how prescient that instinct had been.<\/p>\n

Those who spent time with him also remembered something that now feels profound: how deeply he appreciated life\u2019s simplest pleasures.<\/p>\n

His Instagram feed is filled with flowers and cats, outings with friends and encounters with famous faces like Kelsey Grammer and his friend Rick Santorum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This was not a man waiting around to die. He was too busy living.<\/p>\n

In his Post column, Eisner warned, \u201cThe logic of assisted suicide leads inevitably to the conclusion that those with doctor-approved expiration dates are living lives not worth living.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York lawmakers rejected his warning.<\/p>\n

But Eisner left behind something more powerful than an argument: the evidence of his own 35 years.<\/p>\n

Dovie Eisner feared a society increasingly willing to tell people in bodies like his that death could be an act of dignity.<\/p>\n

His own life offered the answer: Dignity is never in the dying; it\u2019s in insisting on living, fully and enthusiastically.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bethany Mandel writes and podcasts at The Mom Wars and is a homeschooling mother of six in greater Washington, DC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On May 17, 2025, Nicholas Tomaino, now an editor at The Washington Post, photographed his friend Dovie Eisner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[37203,10585,15893,131129,34202,9,56,63,65,64,299,131130,2208,340],"class_list":["post-350988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-assisted-suicide","tag-canada","tag-disabilities","tag-kelsey-grammer","tag-netherlands","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-opinion","tag-rick-santorum","tag-spain","tag-suicide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}